


Living in the Moment

by Karios



Category: The Good Place (TV)
Genre: Comfort, Episode Related, Episode: s03e06 A Fractured Inheritance, Gen, Ice Cream, Ice Cream Parlors, Janet (The Good Place) POV, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-24
Updated: 2020-12-24
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:20:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28294455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Karios/pseuds/Karios
Summary: While Michael and Eleanor save Donna Shellstrop and Tahani and Chidi deal with Kamilah, Jason takes Janet for ice cream.
Relationships: Janet (The Good Place) & Jianyu Li | Jason Mendoza
Comments: 27
Kudos: 52
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	Living in the Moment

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mylittleredgirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mylittleredgirl/gifts).



Janet doesn't exactly regret coming to Earth. It is her job to help the humans, and this is one of two ways she can help. She can play a role in Eleanor's soul squad mission, and more importantly she wants it to succeed. If it does, all Good Janets can have Bearimys and Bearimys to spend helping humans worthy of The Good Place.

She is also circulating the manifesto of the neighborhood's experiences, but it is in the many capable hands of the Janet network, and therefore it is arguably most right for her to be here on Earth. 

She might be a bit stressed to be without the full extent of her Janet powers, but she's coping. Eleanor still asks the same kind of self-interested questions which Janet has already called up, so she doesn't need the stream of all constantly-updating knowledge to be confident in her answers.

While she remains unable to simply appear where she is needed, Janet finds that she prefers driving to walking. However that might only be because Jason calls "Window seat!" and dives in next to her, and she can watch the wonder written all over his adorable human face as they make their way to wherever they are going. Or it could be....No, it's definitely Jason. 

Which explains why when they are in Budapest, and ostensibly here to help Tahani to help her sister, Janet can't deny she feels happier to be following Jason around as he looks at the exhibits, instead. She rattles off evaluations for each of the paintings, basking in his unbridled joy as he points there, and there, and there.

Well, Janet supposes that she could deny it technically, she is, after all, a Janet evolved enough to lie, but she does not want to. In spite of Jason's request that they "do this for all of the paintings", he grows bored after a mere fourteen appraisals of monetary value later. Janet suspects he is disappointed that the painting he described as "two dogs hanging backwards off a giant pickle" does not have more value than the one he dubs "boobs and another set of boobs".

"Let's get away from all the paintings and go get ice cream!" Jason proposes.

"Ice cream?" Janet holds her hands out to manifest some into existence. There is no satisfying noise and no ice cream appears. She knows there would not be, yet her hands dangle there for a minute anyway, until Jason snatches one of them up.

"Yeah. Come on this way," he says, and he tugs.

Janets of all varieties are too strong and too dense to be led around by the hand under a human's towing force, but Janet says "Bing!" and does her best to pretend that it is Jason's imagination hurtling her forward. It does feel a little better than plain walking anyway.

She misses her constantly updating knowledge stream, her pleasant bing, her boundless void. She has to actually worry about what might be going on with Tahani and to wonder how it's going in Nevada with Eleanor and Michael, instead of simply knowing it. Worst of all, the future stretches out in front of her, blank as her void. It's terrifying. How does anyone handle this degree of uncertainty?

She pivots briefly to glance over and check on Tahani on their way out of the gallery; Tahani's with Chidi and how much trouble can they get into really?

Once outside, Jason leads Janet down the street and around the corner and sure enough, there's an ice cream shop. It is convenient there is one that is only a suitable dragging-a-friend distance away.

The little bell that chimes as they step through the door feels a bit like a "Bing!" of arrival. It's a small room, a few rows of freezers and bars of toppings along the far wall, a checkout counter to the left, and six round tables on this side nearest to the door. The tables have swirly pastel-colored tops and beige-colored support poles and cross bracing so that they look like large ice cream cones made of metal. Michael would love this place from its bright neon walls to its checkerboard floor.

"It's self-serve," Jason says, "Dope!"

Jason grabs a cup and fills it halfway with a thick layer of chocolate while Janet trails after him and selects a butter pecan, lamenting the lack of flavors like "First Gulp of Air on a Crisp Winter Morning" or "Hug From an Old Friend You Haven't Seen in Years" that were available in the first iteration of 12358-W. She idly wonders if this makes her the first Janet to feel homesickness. She starts to wander away with her cup.

"No, Janet, you need toppings!" Jason says as he gleefully loads on toppings of every color, shape, size, and texture onto his bowl: candy-coated chocolates, gummis, mini marshmallows, pretzel bits, sprinkles, finished off with several pumps of various sauces.

"Right." Janet has no idea what she actually wants and knows that no combination of toppings can really be ideal, so she takes six items in different sections and dumps them in quickly. Carmel, cookie bits, strawberry slices, licorice, some kind of sour candy, and a sprinkle of cinnamon. It is strangely reminiscent of one of the abstract canvases back in the gallery worth 8.7 million. Jason pays with Australian Dollars at the checkout, adding bills until the human at the register decides to overlook the inconvenience of currency conversion.

They claim a table by a window. Jason says, "Attacking the ice cream mountain now," and makes explosion noises as he sinks his spoon into the dessert.

"We need whipped cream!" Jason declares, a few bites in.

"There's a tub for whipped topping, I'll get you some," Janet replies.

"No, it's better when you can spray it!" He swivels in his chair. "Hey, Hungarian ice cream lady, can I get a can of whipped cream, please?"

Janet repeats the request in Hungarian. Jason puts fifty more AUD on the table and receives a brand new aerosol can of whipped cream in return. "Yes, you the woman!" Jason fistbumps the accommodating ice cream shop owner and then Janet. He eats a long stream of whipped cream straight from the can, and then sprays some in Janet's mouth too.

"Jason, you probably shouldn't just give out money like that," Janet says once the can is half empty.

Jason shrugs. "I have lots of it now, and I wanted the can, so why not?"

Janet finds she can't really argue with that. It's sweet and if she is not, you know, accidentally possibly damming him for all of eternity—she having removed his capacity to do altruistic good, now that he knows the exact truth of the universe—it probably would've been worth several good points. She'll ask an Neutral Janet in Accounting.

Thinking about points has her wondering about the ethical value of going out with her married friend, who is also her husband in a timeline he no longer remembers. Simultaneously it occurs to her that the two proprietors and one single other patron of this frozen dairy confections establishment do not know that she's a Janet, a repository of all knowledge conceived of by The Makers of Light, Darkness, and Everything in Between, whose sole purpose is to serve humans in The Good Place. Nor do they have any idea that Jason is one of four humans working to possibly save the afterlife.

To these three random humans, Janet and Jason are just two people on a date. Janet leans across the table and dabs Jason's adorable ice cream mustache away with a napkin. He grins at her and if she did not know better, she would swear something inside her melted like her neglected dessert.

She wants to tell him she loves him, but of course it's absolutely, perfectly okay that he married Tahani, and she's definitely not jealous. 'Your Janet does not possess the capacity for emotions,’ her manual says. She is fine. She is absolutely fine; she does not want someone to come by and marbelize her so she can be in this moment forever. Never mind that she can revisit this moment anytime; that it is being seared into her storage banks in perfect detail.

"Look, Janet!" He shoves a gummi worm into each of his nostrils. "I'm a walrus!"

For the first time since her friends accidentally stumbled into her and Michael discussing the afterlife in front of the trans-dimensional door, she feels not only okay, but truly at ease. Staring at Jason's impromptu gummi worm walrus face is the key to peace, for Janet anyway.

And for a being who is supposed to feel every single moment as now, she can safely say she's never felt so present.

Jason reaches up and plucks the worms back out again. He sets them aside.

"You gonna be good?" He peers at her seriously.

"I'm always good. I'm a Good Janet." She shoots him an exaggerated grin and a thumbs up.

"That's not what I meant," Jason says, and he looks almost miffed at the way her response brushed him off.

She doesn't want Jason to feel dismissed, so Janet digs down deep, past the swirling chaos of feelings and really thinks before she says, "Yeah, Jason, I think I am."

"Then let's head out. Peace!" Jason hopped up, thumped his chest and shot a peace sign to the room.

They meet Chidi and Tahani in the parking lot. 

"Where were you?" Chidi asks, incredulous. "We got arrested!"

"Getting ice cream! And making Janet feel better," Jason explains, characteristically cheerfully.

"What was wrong with Janet?" Tahani asks. "And we were fine, Chidi, really."

"I'm fine too," Janet says a little too quickly. "Let's get on the road!"

Jason dives in the front passenger seat again, and yeah, Janet really likes driving.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to phnelt for betaing <3.


End file.
